Dear Mr. Mayers,
As you may observe, I am sending you a follow-up to my open letter of 11 June.
I had hoped to issue a letter of thanks for your prompt response to my previous one some time now, having received 2 calls from members of your staff (at your direction) on the 13 June.
However, unfortunately I cannot thank you.
COERCED UPGRADED BUNDLED SERVICE NOT WORKING
I am writing you again because, despite your Company’s coercing me into accepting your bundled service (allegedly 5G) on the 13 June, I am only able to email this letter to the media because of the kindness of a neighbour (incidentally with a different service provider).
For the last 48-plus hours (since Thursday night July 5) thanks to your bundled service I have no phone, internet or television service at my residence. If I am to believe your call centre, every customer in the Trincity area is also without your bundled service because ‘there is an issue at Mausica and the technicians have given no estimated time for its resolution’.
Seems like the landslide that knocked out your last tv service at Lady Young has migrated to Mausica.
Well, Mr. Chairman, on Friday a colleague with whom I worked for close to 2 decades passed away suddenly. Several of my other work colleagues naturally tried to inform me via my non-functioning phone so that I only learnt of her demise almost 2 days later, purely my chance.
I don’t know if any other urgent communications have also been missed since I am virtually isolated by the collapse of your ‘new upgraded service’.
I should also let you know that since my “migration” to your ‘new’ TSTT bundled service, I have not had more than a single day in which my tv signal routinely disappeared for several minutes every 2-3 hours or so.
Even promised technicians visits are now 7 days unfulfilled; Not that they would have anything to do at my home.
The visits by your technicians and conversations with your staff and call centre, have convinced me that your company is only ‘trying a thing’ with this new service OJT style or is totally unprepared to offer the service. Perhaps that is why you have been forcing long-standing landline customers, like me, into ‘migrating’ to you bundled wireless package, to be guniea pigs.  
Further, Mr. Chairman, it is only on discovering that my migrated phone service did not provide me with voice messaging or caller ID which were part of package on my nearly 40-year old copper wire phone service, did your staff condescend to tell me that my package did not transfer with my ‘migration’. The only explanation I received from your courteous staff is that by being able to speak over a wireless rather than a wired telephone service, the package was different because “that is how the technology is set up”.
Well, the provision of my telephone service is changed (without informing me) and the technology, not the decisions of your company, is to blame. This is the most ludicrous stuff I have heard from TSTT/BMOBILE/BLINK so far.
TSTT/BMOBILE/BLINK COMPETING WITH AMPLIA
 The most astonishing thing is, Mr. Chairman, checks with two of my immediate neighbours who have been coerced or cajoled into ‘migrating’ to AMPLIA cable services yesterday revealed that their phone service was working while I had none with your TSTT wireless service.
Isn’t that curious, Mr. Chairman, my neighbours just over the road from me are now with AMPLIA while I am with TSTT wireless and we all had TSTT copper wire phone service only weeks ago!
So, AMPLIA and TSTT/BMOBILE/BLINK are competing for customers right along my avenue.
Mr., Chairman, none of your staff with whom I have raised this intriguing corporate state of affairs seem to be at a pay-grade high enough to allow them to understand, far less explain, how TSTT and AMPLIA (owned by TSTT) are “competitors” in the same neighbourhoods.
And, AMPLIA is simply a new name for the corporate assets of Massey Communications purchased with public money by TSTT under your predecessor.
Perhaps, you might be able to furnish an explanation.
This all sounds like corporate misrepresentation or false advertising to me. But, then again, it might be something caused by ‘the technology’.
In any event, we, the customers are being screwed.
WHAT NEXT?
Mr. Chairman, I need to let you know that having posted my June Open Letter to my blog and my Facebook page, I have received several comments and responses which have assured me that I am not alone in the provision of extremely bad and deteriorating service by your company.
Loss of service for as long as 3 years, difficulty in making payments at your kiosks (having closed your service offices) are only some of the horror stories that others have shared.
Having been forced to ‘migrate’ and ‘upgrade’ to your wireless bundled service with no improvement in my service and continuous frustration in simply trying to look at television, I have received an ultimatum from my household to see which other service provider to choose.
You see, Mr. Chairman, if you followed the conversations on my Facebook page regarding my first letter to you, you would have seen that more than one person advised me “Why you don’t just switch provider”.
Well, Sir, having been a phone customer of your company ever since I have had my residential phone and having had my internet service only with your company, you may understand my reluctance to take that advice.
Besides, I was of the view that my raising the issues I did in the way I did would have assisted other customers of your company in obtaining relief too.
I even thought that your history in the corporate world might have been an assurance that things would have improved at TSTT/BMOBILE/BLINK/AMPLIA.
But, my optimism has proven to be misplaced.
As part of my public duty and civic responsibility, I have decided to again communicate with you in this manner, in the hope that this time you might answer my questions posed to you above (and not via someone at a lower pay grade).
On receipt of your response, I shall be pursuing the issue of the purported competition among companies which form part of the same TSTT/BMOBILE/BLINK/AMPLIA conglomerate with the relevant quarters, should the explanations be as disappointing as your service has been.
I do hope you are enjoying your World Cup in the comfort and convenience of your abode.
Your long and loyal customer,
 
 /s/Clyde A. Weatherhead.
A customer who refuses
to be bullied and blackmailed
by your conglomerate.
cc:        Telecommunications Authority of
            Trinidad and Tobago
            Consumer Affairs Division
            Public Utilities Commission

Here we go again. Another Episode in the saga of the appointment of a Commissioner of Police.
Dateline July 2: The President submits Notification of Nomination for appointment of CoP, together with 2 letters from the Chair of the Police Service Commission (PolSC), pursuant to s.123 of the Constitution.
Dateline July 3:  Leader of Government Business in motion to adjourn the House – “I am informed by the Clerk that a document has come to the Parliament regarding a Notification for appointment to the office of Commissioner of Police. In this House we have determined….any recommendations coming out of that flawed process cannot and will not be accepted…..I have instructed the Clerk that this matter will not be proceeded with”.
              Chaguanas West MP: This is ‘really a subversion of the Constitution’.
Dateline July 4:  Headline - House to debate motion on 2nd-ranked CoP nominee.Flashback:  House Order Paper for February 2, 2018 PAPERS – Notification for nomination to the Office of Commissioner of Police.
Why Are We Here?
Background: The Constitution. s.123(4) – The President shall issue a Notification in respect of each person nominated under subsection (3) and the Notification shall be subject to affirmative resolution of the House of Representatives.
Legal Notice 218 of 2015 - THE COMMISSIONER OF POLICE AND DEPUTY COMMISSIONER OF POLICE (SELECTION PROCESS) ORDER, 2015 UNDER SECTION 123(2) OF THE CONSTITUTION:
4. (1) Where, in relation to clause 3(f), the House of Representatives does not approve of the highest graded candidate on the Order of Merit List pursuant to section 123 of the Constitution, subsequent nominations in order of merit may be submitted to the House of Representatives from the Order of Merit List only in accordance with the procedure set out in the Constitution.
Developments: On February 2, rather than reject the Nominations for CoP and DCoP, as s.123(4) of the Constitution mandates (shall), the House (on both sides) set up a Special Select Committee to review the PolSC’s recruitment process.
While the SSC proceedings and report make NO reference to any land issue concerning the nominee for CoP, the opportunity was taken to assault his character in the media and otherwise over that irrelevant issue.
The Government side of the House (after the Opposition walked out) decided that the process was flawed and the process would be referred back to the PolSC for its review and to propose changes, according to the PM.
The nomination for CoP was rejected.
Subsequently, on 102FM on a Sunday morning, Junior Minister in the Ministry of the AG and Legal Affairs, Hinds, told the public that Government was reviewing the selection process. He said, the Government wants to include publishing the names and photos of the applicants to allow the public to comment on them; like is done for Police recruits.
Now, all of this condemnation of the PolSC and denunciation of ‘flawed process” from which “recommendations…cannot and will not be accepted” is simply reversed because the present Chair of the PolSC has said the Commission “simply doesn’t have the money, time and other resources to allocate to conducting a completely new process.” in a letter which was sent together with the Nomination Notice on July 2.
Did the Leader of Government Business and the Cabinet only read the PolSC’s letter after her “instruction to the Clerk”, contrary to the provisions of s.123(4) of the Constitution and Legal Notice 218 of 2015?
Is the lack of “money, time and other resources” an acceptable reason, to Government, to turn away from it’s ‘flawed process’ position and agree to debate the Nomination Notice? Didn’t the Government consider the cost of a “completely new process” before it proceeded to attack the PolSC and the Nominations in February?
Or, has the possibility of a barrage of Court matters filed by one or more of the applicants in the last selection process if they start a fresh process only now occurred to the Government?
The Chaguanas MP was right to denounce the Leader of Government Business’ ‘Instruction to the Clerk” that the Nomination ‘will not be proceeded with” is completely contrary to the provisions of s.123 of the Constitution and 4(1) of Legal Notice 218 of 2015.
If the Government did not want the nominees for CoP and DCoP in February, all they had to do was not affirm, that is, veto the nominations as the Constitution allows them to do.
But, they wanted to score political points and people’s reputations in the process.
The Real Flaw in the Management of the Police Service
 The flaw in the entire management of the Police Service, not just in the recruitment process, which has failed to provide leadership in the face of runaway murderous criminality goes back to the so-called reform passed by the Parliament in 2006.
In 2006, the Parliament (Executive included) decided unanimously that it must:

1. approve the membership of the PolSC,
2. direct how it is to conduct its recruitment of the only few officers it left under its jurisdiction while the CoP who is given the powers it had over 7,000 officers and,
3. also decided who is to be CoP and DCoP using its veto.

The mess that was created then by the politicians is what is being reaped now in the failure to appoint a CoP and DCoP and the total failure of management in the Police Service.
But the Parliament (politicians) is pinning the blame for the mess on the PolSC and not itself (themselves).
The Special Select Committee also unanimously appointed by the politicians, usurped the judicial role in reviewing the process rather than the House doing what the Constitution requires it to do in relation to the appointment of CoP and DCoP.
Oh! What a tangled web has been weaved when politicians (red and yellow) set out to deceive!!
The politicians have made a mess of the Constitution and management of the Police Service and the citizens are paying for it with their lives.
This is an absolute disaster that requires the intervention of the body politic if it is to be corrected.
 
Clyde A Weatherhead
A Citizen Fighting for
Democratic Renewal
of Our Society
 
July 5, 2018

WHY DO MOST DISCUSSIONS DEGENERATE INTO TALKING ABOUT PEOPLE AND REPEATING SOMEONE ELSE'S AGENDA?
Within the last few days, I listened to some talk show discussions on a radio station which advertises itself as 'most influential'.
On 2 occasions the 'topic' started off addressing serious issues - the disparity in sentencing for possession of an uzi automatic weapon vs obscene language to a police officer in one case, and, reports of possible failure by an Attorney to pay Damages collected on behalf of a client to that client in over 2 years.
Serious issues indeed.
Just cast your minds back to the 2 cases, some years ago, in which there were serious sentencing disparities in sexual offences matters and how the women's movement got into action and there was some redress.
But, in the world of infotainment - promoted by the US networks - the serious discussion on sentencing where a youth was jailed for 30 days for obscene language while a man who had an automatic weapon hidden inside a tv and told the Court he intended to sell it, was only asked to pay a fine, with time to pay.
In the atmosphere of murderous criminal slaughter, weapon possession with an admitted intention to sell could by no stretch of the imagination be less serious than juvenile obscene language.
But, in this talk show discussion, this matter ended up in a discussion about 'dishonesty - real or perceived - of Opposition politicians. It even degenerated into a mauvais langue and speculation about the home of the Opposition Leader.
The discussion on the failure of the Attorney to pay his client Damages awarded to him and other matters almost inevitably drifted from the rights of the client and his possible redress.
It, too, ended up in a tirade about the Law Association and who was responsible for putting that Attorney in the Senate.
In these days of 'fake news' and other attacks on the media, both traditional and social, championed by Donald Trump, one response by the mainstream media, is to say 'We good'; It's social media that is the problem. Even though some media houses (print and electronic) now use social media posts as their 'source' of "news".
The issue is that both in the regular media and on social media, discussion almost inevitably degenerates into mauvais langue about people and events.
Worse, it generally ends in repeating the mantras of one or other political party about the other and their claims about 'Who is More Corrupt' than Who, when Corruption in public life began and has been nurtured with both of them occupying the positions Government.
That narrow partisan discussion is part of the agenda of those whom those political parties serve to keep the people from discussing the Real Issues which are affecting their lives and have them living in anxiety for their safety, security, incomes and livelihoods and the future of their children and society.
The more we are sold the idea that it is enough for us to be concerned with discussing people and events, the less we are able to really examine the Issues - What is the real Cause of the Problems we face and What is the Solution.
The introduction of 24-hour network news (now mostly speculation by 'experts' and 'analysts'; then, the talk show culture on the local airwaves with the introduction of 30+ radio stations battling for market share and ratings, and later Social Media - This so-called 'democratisation' of the media has turned into a multiplication of the propaganda to defend the status quo, rather than fostering a real social dialogue for ensuring the participation of the majority of the body politic in serious political discussion about real issues.
For the people, who are faced with the anxieties arising daily in a social system which does not fulfil their needs, guarantee their Rights or provide them with a secure future, to accept that 'Politics is a matter for some special group of 'politicians' ' and small talk about this or that one or about which of their political parties is better is to fall into the trap that those who control wealth and power have set to keep things just the way they are and without any progress or solution.
We must refuse to be trapped by that agenda.
The people need to set their own agenda - To analyse and understand that the problems they face are not merely the result of the 'policies' or 'actions' of a particular Party-in-Power.
The Real Source of the problems we face, is the economic, political, social and cultural construct of the existing social order, the nature of the kind of society in which we are living.
The agenda of those who benefit from this kind of society - the Rich and Powerful - has a big element which is to keep the Majority from seeing the real source of the problem - the very system itself and focusing somewhere else that will only result in replacing one Party-in-Power with another and leave the Power-Behind-the-Throne (the 1%) with their wealth and power intact.
Let's get serious and start setting the Agenda that benefits We, the People.
 
Clyde Weatherhead
A Citizen Who Fights for
Democratic Renewal of
Our Society